Tops and Sops (Eternal Dungeon #1.6)

"Tops are worse, there's no doubt of that. While the sops are singing on about joy and love, the top is screaming in your ear that you'd better move your bloody bum faster or he'll smash your face in. He means it too. I think I was about eight when I realized that the world is one giant prison with us bottoms as the prisoners, and the tops as our guards and torturers. Seemed obvious to me that the only thing to do was for the bottoms to make a well-planned attack on the tops and tumble their bodies into the midden where they deserve to lie."

The torturer was young, inexperienced, and lacking in knowledge of the world. The prisoner was tough, worldlywise, and had an infallible plan that would give him escape from this place. So why did the prisoner feel as though the torturer had the edge?

Imprisoned for attempting to protect a fellow laborer against the cruelty of their supervisor, Little thinks he is ready to confront the cruelty of the torturers in the Eternal Dungeon. But life in the dungeon is about to take a strange turn. With one torturer beginning to lose control of himself, and another torturer trying desperately to balance conflicting duties . . . well, what is Little to do when he finds that he has been assigned a torturer who gives him presents?

This darkly humorous novelette can be read on its own or as the sixth and final story in the "Rebirth" volume of The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning historical fantasy series set in a land where the psychologists wield whips.